A hearing to plan the trial is scheduled for 5 February 2008 before the 17th chamber of the correctional tribunal of Paris, according to Hirondelle sources.
The association SOS Racisme had filed a complaint in October 2006, describing Mr Pean book on the genocide in Rwanda as "negationist".
According to an official statement by the Ibuka, the genocide survivors association in Kigali, they have joined in the complaint.However this could not be confirmed in Paris.
In Kigali, Rwandan capital, François Xavier Ngarambe, former President of Ibuka, said his intention was "to mobilize the Rwandan community living in Europe but also to support the national media, within the limits of means, to follow the trial".
A score of passages of the books are targeted for racial defamation and provocation to discrimination, violence and racial hatred. Pean writes, in particular, that "the culture of the lie and dissimulation dominates all the others in the Tutsis or that the Tutsi rebels "succeeded until now in completely falsifying Rwandan reality, to allot to others their own crimes and acts of terrorism, to demonize their enemies".
Claude Durand, editor of Mr. Pean’s book, is also charged in the court.
SRE/PB/SC
© Hirondelle News Agency